Business Intelligence (BI) generally refers to software tools used to improve business enterprise decision-making. These tools are commonly applied to financial, human resource, marketing, sales, customer and supplier analyses. More specifically, these tools can include: reporting and analysis tools to present information; content delivery infrastructure systems for delivery and management of reports and analytics; data warehousing systems for cleansing and consolidating information from disparate sources; and data management systems, such as relational databases or On Line Analytic Processing (OLAP) systems used to collect, store, and manage raw data.
There are a number of commercially available products to produce reports from stored data. For instance, Business Objects Americas of San Jose, Calif., sells a number of widely used report generation products, including Crystal Reports™, Business Objects OLAP Intelligence™, and Business Objects Enterprise™. As used herein, the term report refers to information automatically retrieved (i.e., in response to computer executable instructions) from a data source (e.g., a database, a data warehouse, and the like), where the information is structured in accordance with a report schema that specifies the form in which the information should be presented. A non-report is an electronic document that is constructed without the automatic retrieval (i.e., in response to computer executable instructions) of information from a data source. Examples of non-report electronic documents include typical business application documents, such as a word processor document, a presentation document, and the like.
A report document is generally created by a specialized tool including executable instructions to access data and format it. A report document where the content does not include external data, either saved within the report or accessed live, is a template document for a report rather than a report document. Unlike, other non-report documents that may optionally import external data within a document, a report document by design is primarily a medium for accessing, formatting, and presenting external data.
A report design tool contains executable instructions specifically designed to facilitate working with external data sources. In addition to instructions regarding external data source connection drivers, these instructions may include advanced filtering of data, instructions for combining data from different external data sources, instructions for updating join structure and relationships in report data, and instructions including logic to support a more complex internal data model (that may include additional constraints, relationships, and metadata).
In contrast to a spreadsheet type application, a report generation tool is generally not limited to a table structure but can support a range of structures. A report design tool is designed primarily to support imported external data, whereas a spreadsheet application equally facilitates manually entered data and imported data. In both cases, a spreadsheet application applies a spatial logic that is based on the table cell layout within the spreadsheet in order to interpret data and perform calculations on the data. In contrast, a report design tool is not limited to logic that is based on the display of the data, but rather can interpret the data and perform calculations based on the original (or a redefined) data structure and meaning of the imported data. Spreadsheets applications work within a looping calculation model, whereas report generation tools may support a range of calculation models. Although there may be an overlap in the function of a spreadsheet document and a report document, the applications used to generate these documents contain instructions with different assumptions concerning the existence of an external data source and different logical approaches to interpreting and manipulating imported data.
The present invention is related to the analytical and reporting aspects of BI. Establishing business strategies is an increasingly complex exercise. There are ongoing efforts to supply quantitative tools to enhance business strategy decision making. In particular, there is an increasing focus on various business metrics. A business metric is a measure of a standard associated with the performance of an enterprise (e.g., commercial, governmental, non-profit, etc.). One type of business metric is characterized as a Key Performance Indicator (KPI). While there are existing tools to identify KPIs, these tools do not rigorously analyze relationships between KPIs and the organization's strategy.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a new technique for promoting quantitative business decisions. In particular, it would be desirable to provide visual tools characterizing quantitative data analyses. More particularly, it would be desirable to provide a visual strategy map and techniques to validate relationships associated with a visual strategy map.